The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1887-08-30

CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY AND THE
MAIL SERVICE.

La the Sydney Evening News" of
August 5th appears an interview with
prominent Australian, who has recently
travelled round the world, in relation to
the following telegram;
LONDON, August 3d.-A letter signed by
300 members of the House of Commons
has been presented to Lord Salisbury in
favor of the adoption of the Canadian Pa
cific line, as an alternative mail route to
China and Australia.
We present below brief extracts from
the interview, as the question is one OF
some importance to these Islands. He
said:
do not profess to know anything about
the motives which induced those 800 mem
bers of the House of Commons to sign that
letter. The condition made by
the Pacific colony was that the Dominion
should construct a transcontinental rail-
way, and the Dominion has had to do it
and having done this, is at its wits ends to
know what use to make of it. You see it
does not connect city like San Francisco,
and populations like those on the Pacific
Slope and east coast of the United States
with over fifty millions of people in the
east of the States. So it is pretty useless
as commercial speculation, whether for
the transit of goods or passengers. Mind,
like most great works carried out by Great
Britain or one of her Colonies, it is well
and solidly constructed, and It's rolling
stock is first-class; but as a paying line it
10 II Mi of
iii New South Wales, looked at through a
microscope. 1t is just the same. only some
hundred times a bigger failure as paying
concern. So suppose an effort is being
made TO quicken it up into financial vital
lty by making it "a part of new mail route
to Australia, by running line OF we'll
subsidized steamers as part of the concern
Well, let US suppose this done, and she
new mail line started fairly. we all re-
member for how many years after the first
railway from the eastern States OF America
to San Francisco was opened, and it was
iade an Australian mail route, the mails
we're delayed tor days and weeks at time
IN consequence of blockages of the line by
snow. OF course, when the line was first
opened, we were all told that it had been
so etfectualiy protected by snowsheds that
these blocks could not occur. But they did
occur. You see the snow had an ugly
habit, not uncommon in nature, which
general disregards what man does, of COM
ing down and blocking the line each season
just where there was no snow shed And
it took the Union Pacific people just ten
years to find out pretty nearly every part
of their line where a snow block was likely
to happen, and to go to those parts by
snow sheds, and they have not found them
all out yet. Well, even supposng that the
Canadian Pacific people are more clever
than those of the Union Pacific, and have
learned coed deal from the experience of
the latter. it will take them at least five
years before they can make their line rea-
sonably secure for the passage of mail
trains without detention by snow.
Now, that's one difficulty about
the alternative mail route. One, of course,
by no means insuperable, but a very ugly
practical difficulty when contrasted with a
line on which such difficulties have we'll
nigh disappeared. Another difficulty Is to
be found i'll the Pacific terminus of the
Canadian line. 1t is at best, so far rs pop
ularion aud development go, a one-horse
place altogether. OF course the railway
has been made in order to change all that:
o'ut pei ha?s travellers to and from Aus
tralia will prefer going through Il country
which does not require their patronage and
assistance for development
have spoken TO masters of vessels who
have been trading there for twenty years,
and they tell of weeks spent lying off the
coast waiting for the fog to lift. Now they
talk OF lessening the mail time between
Australia and England by two days, by
taking the Canadian Pacific IN preference
TO the San Francisco route Is it not
more likely that, with the things / have
mentioned to contend against the time
would in most cases be extended by week
or two2 And this might be more fairly
reckoned upon if the American steamers
make San Diego their port, and thus make
certainty of shortening the present time
by more than twenty-four hours Have
you ever seen q chart of the way into the